Part IV: Rainforest views and waterfalls

I didn't want to stretch this trip report over weeks and weeks. I didn't want to break it up into a zillion parts either, but would one post with 5000 pictures have been better? I don't know. At any rate, we are pressing on. I love the rainforest! Love it! It seems like it must be the most beautiful place in the world! I suppose this is, amazingly, the third rainforest I've been to…although temperate rainforest (the Redwoods) doesn't quite seem to count.

What surprised me is that the rainforest in Puerto Rico looked/felt different from the rainforest in Hawaii! It makes me wonder if the rainforest in Brazil, or Peru, or Africa is different still? I suppose it must be. That makes me wish I could visit all of them. (When I die and become a being of light and spirit…I will!)

After we got to our rainforest house, we spent the next few days either in the National Forest rainforest—El Yunque, it's called—or just outside it, in what was still the same rainforest, but not National Park land. I was actually quite worried about this, because you have to have tickets/reservations to get into El Yunque, and I had read lots of people online saying they hadn't been able to get them. You used to be able to get tickets 30 days in advance online, but in July of this year they changed the policy so you could ONLY get tickets 24 hours before you wanted to enter. (And now, as I'm writing this post, I read that as of the end of August, you don't need a reservation at all anymore! Make up your minds, people!) Anyway, I was so afraid we wouldn't get any tickets! And then we would never get to see it!

But, once we were actually in the town of Luquillo, I saw that the actual National Park was not ALL the rainforest. The actual forest extends outside of the boundaries of the Park, so if you can't get El Yunque tickets—there is still a lot of rainforest to see! Especially if you are staying right there as we were!

Then we actually DID manage to get tickets too, for both days we wanted them. I just logged on to the Recreation.gov website right at 8 am when the tickets opened up and we were lucky! I'm so glad, because I loved El Yunque…but if we hadn't gotten tickets, I think we still would have been okay.

Anyway, the pictures in this post are of actual El Yunque. There is a nice visitor's center with a walkway over the trees, some outdoor exhibits, and then a small "discovery trail" where some of the plants are labeled. It was cool, but probably the least cool part of the forest we saw.

The ocean looks so far away in this picture. It felt close in real life. Like you could just hop over the trees and be there.

It was worth going to the visitor's center just for these parrots. They are Puerto Rican Parrots native to this rainforest. I think they are endangered, but making a comeback. Anyway, we were happy to see the "Green Caws" (as we all thought of them) and excited to show the pictures to Gus. :)

Some of the flowers from the discovery trail…they looked fake, as tropical flowers always do

Admiring some huge leaves

A "clearing" in the forest—still completely covered in green, but bare of trees. I was curious about this. What made it? Fire? Lightning? Wind? Or does this just happen when the soil isn't quite right? It must allow a whole different ecosystem to grow in this spot!

Some cool mushrooms (probably not called that…fungi, anyway) on a branch

I wish I could give more context to these pictures. So many of them just seem like unbroken greenery, and it's probably hard to get a sense of depth. The foliage had so many layers, going back and back and back.

This tree had such interesting, smooth bark!

A closer look

Here's a little place we ate at near the rainforest. So typical of all the restaurants we saw here—it felt like something in a movie to me. Hot. Fans blowing. Sticky tables, a little run-down looking, bottles of drinks behind an outdoor bar.

This was some ginger lemonade we ordered, and it was SO GOOD. Cold. Lemony. And a little spicy.

Some of the trails in the rainforest are closed right now, due to damage from Hurricane Maria or whatever else. We were sad to miss them because they sounded cool, but the trails we did hike were really good too. And it's pretty tiring hiking here. The heat and humidity made us lots more tired than we expected! So only doing a few hikes probably worked out better anyway.

Looking down at a waterfall (hard to tell from this picture whether you're looking up or down)

Lizard friend

The great thing about hiking here, especially since it was so hot and humid, is that the water is so pleasant and if you get hot, you can just jump in! I already went on and on about the warmth of the ocean here. I could wax equally fervent about the warm rivers, which were more astonishing, if anything! I suppose I've never so much as put my toe into a river that wasn't made from snowmelt. And when I read online that the rainforest rivers were "refreshing," I thought, "that's another way of saying COLD." But no. They were, quite simply, refreshing and wonderful! A little cooler than the ocean, perhaps. But just SO nice when you were hiking and hot. We made it a point to hike only by rivers. When they are so easy to come by here in the rainforest, why would we do anything else?

Some of the trails were a little slick and muddy, as you'd expect here. But I wore good hiking sandals and was fine. We also sometimes brought water shoes and hiked in those.

This was Juan Diego Falls. There's a lower falls, which had a nice pool below it but was full of people, and then this higher one which was a little harder to get to, but worth it!

Seb was brave enough to climb up even beyond this waterfall. I didn't dare, but Sam eventually went up there with him.

Way up here! Scary!

They found another waterfall and a deep natural pool a little way up the river. It looked so beautiful!

Back in the second waterfall. I guess it wasn't completely warm. It was a bit of a shock when you actually stepped into the waterfall! Although it was more from the force of the spray than anything else. That water was falling a long way down!

Seb didn't mind.

We were lucky to have this place to ourselves for so long. After this, several girls in bikinis came and posed for so many photos for their instagram feeds. Soooooo many. I thought they would never stop. They didn't play in the water, though—just got their one million pictures and moved on. Not that I have any call to criticize, with the million pictures I took myself! :)

As we hiked back down the trail, there was a sudden downpour! It was SO wet! (And I wish I had a dollar for every person that wrote, smugly, on a travel forum about how "I saw so many people on the trails who were unprepared for rain. Hello, don't people realize it is a RAINforest?" I suppose they would have thought scornfully that WE were some of those very people. But really, we just didn't want to wear rain gear! Why would we? We had just been getting wet anyway, and it wasn't cold. The only trouble was that we didn't dry out very quickly afterward, and our car suffered from it. Oh well!